REGISTRATION NOW OPEN: Northeast Wildlife Trackers Conference

Writing Workshop in the Woods with Jennifer Browdy and Tes Reed

Press Release

"Local author and professor Jennifer Browdy teams up with wilderness educator Tes Reed to offer a special daylong writing workshop, 'Honoring Our Plant and Animal Teachers.' The workshop will take place from 10 am to 4 pm on Friday, September 15 ... in New Marlborough, with a rain date of September 18. [...] Plants and animals—whether mythic, wild, pets, or in the dream/spirit world—have much to teach us about living fully and well. For this day of generative writing, we'll immerse ourselves in the outdoors, communing with Berkshire trees, ferns, fungi and other plants as well as with the animals, birds and butterflies of the forest, seeking the kind of mythic communication that the natural world always offers to humans, when we pay attention. Through carefully designed writing prompts, guided visualization, group activities and plenty of quiet time for writing and meditation, we'll explore our relationship with our plant and animal teachers, coming away refreshed and creatively enlivened." READ MORE

Opinion: To Fight Climate Change, We Need a Better Carbon Market

Peter Coy for The New York Times | UPenn

"...An Aug. 16 report for clients of the British bank Barclays put a positive spin on the problem but contained some worrisome information. The Barclays report focused on the voluntary carbon market. That’s the one that companies such as Microsoft and Salesforce are using to help reach their goals of net-zero carbon emissions. If they can’t reduce their own emissions all the way to zero, they can go into the market and buy credits from someone in, say, Brazil who has earned them by planting trees to soak up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The voluntary carbon market can be a valuable mechanism for directing investment to developing nations that need help in the fight against climate change. 'The market will get big because we need it to get big,' Austin Whitman, the chief executive of the nonprofit Climate Neutral, told me. 'We will not hit net zero without large and well-functioning carbon markets.' ...According to the Barclays report, the price of carbon credits has fallen to around $2 per metric ton of carbon dioxide removed from the atmosphere, down from around $9 early last year. That’s not because the cost of reducing emissions is really just $2 a ton. It’s because buyers don’t trust the quality of the credits. They worry that the sellers of credits aren’t doing what they promise. For example, a seller might claim credit for stopping a forest from being cut down when there was no plan to cut it down in the first place. [...] The price of carbon credits is much higher in the official, intergovernmental markets, which have stricter standards. In the European Union Emissions Trading System, the world’s liquid carbon market, the price of credits is around 94 euros a ton, or more than $100. Those official markets are how countries will comply with the Paris Agreement, a global climate treaty adopted in 2015. Another problem with the voluntary market is double counting, in which a project that reduces emissions is claimed both by the corporation that paid for it and by the country where the work was done. The Barclays report said that the voluntary carbon market — with its inconsistency and lack of regulation — is 'undermining the Paris Agreement process by casting doubt on the legitimacy of country-level emission reductions since these are also being claimed by corporates in other countries.'" READ MORE

The EPA removes federal protections for most of the country's wetlands

James Doubek| NPR

"The Environmental Protection Agency removed federal protections for a majority of the country's wetlands on Tuesday to comply with a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling. The EPA and Department of the Army announced a final rule amending the definition of protected 'waters of the United States' in light of the decision in Sackett v. EPA in May, which narrowed the scope of the Clean Water Act and the agency's power to regulate waterways and wetlands. [...] A 2006 Supreme Court decision determined that wetlands would be protected if they had a 'significant nexus' to major waterways. This year's court decision undid that standard. The EPA's new rule 'removes the significant nexus test from consideration when identifying tributaries and other waters as federally protected,' the agency said. [...] In May, Justice Samuel Alito said the navigable U.S. waters regulated by the EPA under the Clean Water Act do not include many previously regulated wetlands. Writing the court's decision, he said the law includes only streams, oceans, rivers and lakes, and wetlands with a 'continuous surface connection to those bodies.' The EPA said the rule will take effect immediately. 'The agencies are issuing this amendment to the 2023 rule expeditiously — three months after the Supreme Court decision — to provide clarity and a path forward consistent with the ruling,' the agency said. As a result of the rule change, protections for many waterways and wetlands will now fall to states. Environmental groups said the new rule underscores the problems of the Supreme Court decision." READ MORE

Green Groups are divided over a proposal to boost the nation's hydropower. Here's why

Wyatt Myskow & Kristoffer Tigue | Inside Climate News

"...The era of big dams arguably ended long ago. At one point referred to as 'white coal,' hydropower was once a major source of electricity around the country, with the United States building more than 150 dams on the Columbia, Missouri and Colorado River basins in the 30 years following World War II. But today, hydropower provides just a small fraction of the nation’s electricity and is quickly being outpaced globally by its clean energy rivals in new development. Now the industry, with help from a bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers, hopes to change that trend. They argue that hydroelectric dams can provide the kind of steady flow of power that’s needed to provide stability and reliability to the energy grid, especially on cloudy days and windless nights. Earlier this year, two U.S. senators—Republican Steve Daines of Montana and Democrat Maria Cantwell of Washington—introduced a bill that would speed up the licensing process by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for an array of hydroelectric projects, with a focus on converting many dams that don’t currently produce electricity into ones that do. A Senate Energy and Natural Resources subcommittee began initial hearings on the bill in mid-July. The bill has gained early support from industry, environmental groups, Native tribes and even the Biden administration. But it’s also getting pushback from some advocates who say that expanding or extending the use of hydropower could actually worsen climate change and hasten ecological degradation. A growing body of scientific evidence has found that dam reservoirs are a significant source of carbon emissions—particularly methane, a potent greenhouse gas that’s roughly 80 times more effective at warming the atmosphere than carbon dioxide over a 20-year time period. Those emissions are the result of organic matter, including vegetation, dead animals and even fertilizer runoff, piling up in large quantities behind dams and decomposing in the reservoirs." READ MORE

'Historic': Ecuador voters reject oil drilling in Amazon protected area

Al Jazeera

"Voters in Ecuador have passed a referendum to prohibit oil drilling in a protected area of the Amazon rainforest, a move hailed as 'historic' by environmental activists. With nearly all the votes counted on [August 21], almost 60 percent supported the ban on oil development in Yasuni National Park, often described as one of the world’s greatest havens of biodiversity. The referendum was part of a snap general election on Sunday [August 20] that included votes for the presidency and National Assembly. [...] The Yasuni National Park — home to hundreds of species of birds, amphibians and reptiles — was designated by the United Nations cultural agency, UNESCO, as a biosphere reserve in 1989. The park is also the home of several Indigenous communities, some of whom live in self-isolation. The area also holds some of Ecuador’s largest deposits of oil, fuelling pressure to drill in the area. Initially, the government of former President Rafael Correa endeavored to protect the area from development. In 2007, he introduced an initiative calling for the international community to contribute $3.6bn in exchange for a ban on drilling. But when the aid did not materialize, Correa and his successors proceeded with oil extraction on Yasuni land. [...] Supporters of drilling warned that a ban would damage Ecuador’s economy, which relies heavily on oil extraction. Energy Minister Fernando Santos told Al Jazeera this month that ending the drilling would 'result in a loss of $1.2bn annually, which would be detrimental to the country’s economy'. But activists celebrated Sunday’s vote as a victory for Indigenous and environmental protections." READ MORE